Loyal Choices

Truth is a difficult thing to contend with. Peterson J. explains that his belief is that it’s “tempting to circumvent the problem” and sacrificing peace for short term gain that is the challenge. Short term gains are lush.

I think an element of truth can certainly be found in Loyalty. I will address my thoughts here on loyalty, and also how it connects with financial gains in the field of my choice, DeFi.

I dont think it’s easy to disagree with the idea that being loyal is also being truthful with yourself, as well as your choices.

Choices

Let’s start with some choices that are decisions of loyalty in investments. Keep in mind that in DeFi, things move fast. It’s not uncommon for people to move substantial amounts of money weekly — and for it to be cost effective . Sometimes it’s essential.

Back to choices, there is the ability to move, without any social contact, and only consideration of numerical data. This I refer to as the ‘shadow’. Then we have the choice to stand behind your decisions to the ends of time, This, ‘martyr’ . We have a choice to make new frens and to socialize. This, ‘discorder’. Some prefer to make choices based on the designs of the values of others. This ‘bibliophile’. There is also the choices of how to mix these types at different times to produce hybrids of them. I’ll try not to rant.

Shadow

In my values, this choice is the least appealable, for two major reasons. It requires an intense focus on mathematics, and perhaps if my math were better, I might not be so disinclined to employ it more. However, there is the issue of the consideration of how your choices affect other people. This needs to be considered.

Taking profits from a whale or fund is different then causing low value individuals to lose their funds, so that you can gain them.

This is my assumption on the thinking of a number of “traders”. Its all about drawing lines on charts, with mathematical considerations to varying degrees of complexity, while trying to make predictions.

Side thought on TA. Does it only work because other people are doing it? Is one only guessing what other people are drawing?

I do admit that they could very well be using their skills to dig deeper to find the individuals in the numbers, and making choices accordingly.

Also, trading is not the only place where shadows may lurk, they are in it all… assessing tokenomics, checking swap rates, comparing ROIs, evaluating community sizes, to name a few.

We should not fear our own shadows, they are a reflection of who we are and what we do.

Martyr

Like true martyrs, they are valued in what they stand for. Furthermore, I would like to believe, the more noble the value, the better the payoff. Consider that value is not only found in self gain alone.

You need not consider to be a martyr or not, you simply have to choose which value you wish to defend, and perhaps which domain you see that value expressed.

You must watch out for becoming a martyr to a valueless cause.

These considerations came to me in an exchange I joined today between to irate individuals. The exchange is quite long, and bidirectional, so I will paraphrase it. One is angry at the other for attempting to influence the fellow members of the others value domain.

This rises up the considerations of where does the spreading of hate lie adjacent to the exposure of evil. Exposing truth is as needed as is being respectful and supportive.

When I am trying to choose, I consider a domain I feel is beneficial to many people. This has the positive side effect of sometimes increasing capital gains in choices as many may join after.

But Ceazor, martyrs all die right?

Death is inevitable, but luckily in this space, you have as many lives as you do tokens. They don’t all need to be confined to a single domain. Instead, we spread our soldiers around, choose domains of varying positives, and perhaps even move them so they may martyr elsewhere of higher standards.

Discorder

It is said that discourse is what separates man and animal, and although i don’t agree with this for its easy to see animals in communication, it does show the power of socialization to develop strong minded ideas. Even physical touch has been shown to help with the growth of mental health, especially in children(Blackwell, 2000).

In the crypto world, physical touch is unlikely, if not impossible in many cases. However, there are still many ways to have communication.

One of the issues with “friend making” is the tendency to martyr ourselves on the sake of the friendship, rather than the domain of value. It’s also possible that for some, that is enough. “Some of my little soldiers are available to die for our social connections.”

Another issue is friend making and friend maintenance are very different. Its usually easier to maintain friendships, when they lead to mutual gain.

When I was young, we moved around. I became good at making friends but there wasn’t much need for the latter skill development. This has built me up to the person I am today.

I believe that people are able to change through effort and resilience, even to the point that I find talent nothing more than a headstart, (anatomy aside). However, change is in ranges of grey. Its unlikely to be binary.

So I do attempt to reconnect with individuals I agree with, but I know we all know the ease of ghosting people in the world of ever more avatars.

Side thought on anonymity. Does not seeing someone mean they are untrustworthy, or are you relying on body language to make your value judgements.

There are teams of both an anonymous nature and a transparent one. Being known, as we say in the space doxxed, does not ensure accountability.

No person can say that knowing the name and face of everyone they have interacted with has spared them from exploit. I do admit that in order to have legal options, this is usually a necessity. THIS is an important consideration.

But again, having no legal option to pursue does not result in definite malice. One’s actions, and history of them, tend to be a much more reliable measure of trust worthyness.

There are teams that take hits and keep getting up. These are my favorite and I have had the pleasure of interacting with them deeply, but they do carry with them marks of their past. Now im not talking about intentional exploitation here on their behalf, rather on them from the hands of others.

There are old teams that spin up new aliases and do not connect them publicly. These come in two colors in this discussion. There are the ones that can take, have taken, and perhaps want to take again. Obviously, if known, most people would stay away from them, even though some try to ride their waves and avoid the undertow. But knowing is sometimes impossible. If you don’t know them, and no one you know knows them, you have to assume they COULD be takers.

On the other hand, there are the teams that transitioned to new avatars, or even operate multiple at the same time, and perhaps even change their values between them.

We are living in a time where dissociative identity disorder must be getting harder and harder to diagnose.

There are certainly important parts of having multiple personalities. There could be a huge reduction in values from one to the other, to the point a good alias is dwelling in the same mind as a taker. But again, this is not a certainty, rather a consideration.

Im not going to tell you to only invest in doxxed teams, as I don’t believe it makes a difference. The discorder is a person that uses their judge of character to invest in people, or at least one identity of that person, and to follow through with them on the upkeep of social interaction.

Bibliophile

This choice will take you down the path of long reading. Ideas and values are very hard to express, and oftentimes are expressed in writing by a third party chronicling the values of another.

Systems are built by engineers and documentation is written by technical writers, which may be the same person but don’t have to be.

I tend to value the understanding of how things work, and I believe that sharing this is of value in itself. If you don’t understand something, to at least an acceptable degree, how can you possibly expect to value it let alone stay loyal to it.

Understanding can be achieved in many ways; through reading of text, through discourse with knowledgeable people, through trial and error, and through construction itself.

For most investors, construction is not an option, or a desire. Having an idea is difficult, having a good idea, for many people, even harder.

So for most, we look at the ideas of others, we consider if these ideas are easy to understand, and perhaps explain, and whether value will be seen by others here too. The more the merrier.

I have had some difficulty with this aspect. I enjoy learning new ideas, and not staying loyal to old ideas I found to have value, has caused me to lose out on both socializations, as well as financial gains. However, I have also been able to steer clear of some of the darker shadows, on some occasions, as a result of my fickle nature.

Remember I said that moving substantial amounts around can sometimes be valuable. Well this does not only imply to financial gains. Sometimes there is a better idea. One that better achieves the value of the old. It doesn’t make the old bad, just not as good. Crypto has an incredible innovation curve, and I truly enjoy the times when I find myself on what I perceive as the edge of it.

That edge is where some true opportunities lie, but we have to be patient out there for the masses to catch up. Furthermore, Tyson (2019) tweeted “ as the area of our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance.” Oftentimes in the unknown lay dangers. Venture out only as far as time will allow you to be aware of your surroundings beside and behind. Use your other natures to mitigate any possbility to get lost.

In Conclusion

Now, I do appologise if you were looking for actionable routes to take. Perhaps names of teams, projects, or even tokens. But those are not what is found here.

I would also stress again here that we are not made up of the single choices we make, nor is it always a matter of making a single choice rather an uncountable series of bundles of choices and changes of them to new choices, that set our paths. We should, i hope, attempt to make choices that lead toward the greater good, and in doing so, be rewarded according to our collection of choices.